TY  - JOUR
A1  - Herde, Antje
A1  - Eccard, Jana
T1  - Consistency in boldness, activity and exploration at different stages of life
JF  - BMC ecology
N2  - Background: Animals show consistent individual behavioural patterns over time and over situations. This phenomenon has been referred to as animal personality or behavioural syndromes. Little is known about consistency of animal personalities over entire life times. We investigated the repeatability of behaviour in common voles (Microtus arvalis) at different life stages, with different time intervals, and in different situations. Animals were tested using four behavioural tests in three experimental groups: 1. before and after maturation over three months, 2. twice as adults during one week, and 3. twice as adult animals over three months, which resembles a substantial part of their entire adult life span of several months.
 Results: Different behaviours were correlated within and between tests and a cluster analysis showed three possible behavioural syndrome-axes, which we name boldness, exploration and activity. Activity and exploration behaviour in all tests was highly repeatable in adult animals tested over one week. In animals tested over maturation, exploration behaviour was consistent whereas activity was not. Voles that were tested as adults with a three-month interval showed the opposite pattern with stable activity but unstable exploration behaviour.
 Conclusions: The consistency in behaviour over time suggests that common voles do express stable personality over short time. Over longer periods however, behaviour is more flexible and depending on life stage (i.e. tested before/after maturation or as adults) of the tested individual. Level of boldness or activity does not differ between tested groups and maintenance of variation in behavioural traits can therefore not be explained by expected future assets as reported in other studies.
KW  - Animal personality
KW  - Behavioural type
KW  - Microtus arvalis
KW  - Common vole
KW  - Plasticity
KW  - Consistency
KW  - Repeatability
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6785-13-49
SN  - 1472-6785
VL  - 13
IS  - 12
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schuster, Andrea C.
A1  - Herde, Antje
A1  - Mazzoni, Camila J.
A1  - Eccard, Jana
A1  - Sommer, Simone
T1  - Evidence for selection maintaining MHC diversity in a rodent species despite strong density fluctuations
JF  - Immunogenetics
N2  - Strong spatiotemporal variation in population size often leads to reduced genetic diversity limiting the adaptive potential of individual populations. Key genes of adaptive variation are encoded by the immune genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) playing an essential role in parasite resistance. How MHC variation persists in rodent populations that regularly experience population bottlenecks remains an important topic in evolutionary genetics. We analysed the consequences of strong population fluctuations on MHC class II DRB exon 2 diversity in two distant common vole (Microtus arvalis) populations in three consecutive years using a high-throughput sequencing approach. In 143 individuals, we detected 25 nucleotide alleles translating into 14 unique amino acid MHC alleles belonging to at least three loci. Thus, the overall allelic diversity and amino acid distance among the remaining MHC alleles, used as a surrogate for the range of pathogenic antigens that can be presented to T-cells, are still remarkably high. Both study populations did not show significant population differentiation between years, but significant differences were found between sites. We concluded that selection processes seem to be strong enough to maintain moderate levels of MHC diversity in our study populations outcompeting genetic drift, as the same MHC alleles were conserved between years. Differences in allele frequencies between populations might be the outcome of different local parasite pressures and/or genetic drift. Further understanding of how pathogens vary across space and time will be crucial to further elucidate the mechanisms maintaining MHC diversity in cyclic populations.
KW  - MHC diversity
KW  - Selection
KW  - High-throughput next-generation sequencing
KW  - Population cycle
KW  - Common vole
KW  - Microtus arvalis
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00251-016-0916-z
SN  - 0093-7711
SN  - 1432-1211
VL  - 68
SP  - 429
EP  - 437
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  -